[linux-elitists] Mobile Phone Choices

[Patrick Mochel]

On Tue, 25 Jul 2006, Dave wrote:

> The Nokia 770 seems promising, and would be *great* if it was also a phone...

This is a bit tangential, and definitely doesn't answer your original 
question, but hopefully it might be useful..

>From what I understand, all cell phone designs must go through regulatory 
testing, which lasts something on the order of 2 years. I'm not an expert 
on the regulations (and I probably couldn't comment on them if I knew any 
more, because of the cabals involved in setting the standards).

But what is interesting, is that by *not* providing cell phone 
functionality, a company like Nokia can design, implement, and ship a 
device in the same amount of time that it would spend -- after it was 
effectively done -- in testing. For something like the 770, this is good 
because it provides the opportunity of having several iterations of 
improvement, in a relatively short amount of time. And that is important 
because there have been several attempts at making devices like this in 
the recent past, all miserable failures for one reason or another:

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=476
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/13/oqo_launch_date/
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-242264.html

..so having something that looks nice and with a decent set of software 
will help to solidify it. Hopefully.


BTW, there is an upgrade available for the 770 (http://maemo.org/), which 
provides (among other things), VOIP support and compatability with Google 
Talk. With that, and/or the Bluetooth support, you have the ability to 
actually talk to people, but without having to deal with the evilness of 
the GSM carriers..


 	Patrick